L.A.

LOS ANGELES—A few hours after the end of of the Oscars, an actress friend pulled up outside the Chateau Marmont, and after I jumped in shotgun we cut off Sunset Boulevard with a screeching hard left and ripped up Laurel Canyon Boulevard, scaling a mountain to get above the city, ears popping, and we came to a long, isolated driveway on Mulholland Drive, where a view of a thousand blinking parties burning in Los Angeles was unspooled below before us.